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[Terra Firma]

These pictures were sent to me by a good friend who has just returned from Lamington National park and the Lost World. He did not take to many wild shots of birds as he is more into the scenery.I will concerntrate on the birds when i make the trip.

BRUSH TURKEY











CRIMSON ROSELLA, these wild birds are now being tagged with leg rings by national parks i am told.





RAINBOW LORY



The pair of Satin bower birds below will move in on your lunch,you can see the tables in which they move in to take position to see whats on offer, these birds to me are one of my favorites although they lack the bright colours of some of the other genera. I have put together a page on this interesting species.

MALE


FEMALE


This picture below was not taken by my friend but will give an idea of the birds Bower and its obsession with the colour blue. People who live up near the national park report of there blue clothes pegs mysteriously disappearing.



THE BOWERBIRD

Order: Passeriformes


Family: Ptilonorhynchidae

Thumbnail description
Medium-sized, thrush-like, stocky, strong-footed, and typically stout-billed songbirds. Family includes sexually and cryptically monochromatic to dramatically sexually dichromatic species. Bowerbirds are renowned for the bower building behavior of males of polygynous (one male mated with two or more females) species.



Number of genera, species
8 genera; 20 species

Habitat
Rainforests, moss forests, wet sclerophyll (Australian vegetation with hard, short, and often spiky leaves) forests and woodlands, savanna, rocky wooded gorges, and open woodlands to semi-desert

Conservation status
Vulnerable: 1 species; Near Threatened: 1 species

Distribution
Mainland New Guinea and Australia and offshore islands

Evolution and systematics

Bowerbirds have long been closely associated with birds of paradise (Paradisaeidae) but evidence of a major dichotomy between the two groups in anatomical and biological traits is supported by several molecular studies. Bowerbirds are part of an Australasian radiation thought to have occurred during the past 60 million years. They diverged from lyrebirds (Menuridae) and scrub birds (Atrichornithidae) about 45 million years ago (mya). Results of molecular studies place the separation of bowerbirds (superfamily Menuroidea) from birds of paradise and other corvines (superfamily Corvoidea) at 28 mya and indicate that major lineages within them arose 24 mya.

Satins (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus) are the only bowerbirds known from fossil sites; found in Victoria, Australia, two are from the Holocene and one is from the Pleistocene. These fossils are from locations remote from the present wet forest range of the species and attest to a previously more extensive distribution of Australian subtropical rainforests.

The Ptilonorhynchidae comprises 20 species of compact, robust, oscinine songbirds. Three species of socially monogamous and territorial catbirds belong to the genus Ailuroedus. The 17 known or presumed polygynous species consist of one Scenopoeetes, four Amblyornis, one Archboldia, one Prionodura, four Sericulus, one Ptilonorhynchus, and five Chlamydera species.

Physical characteristics

Bowerbird morphology and anatomy are broadly typical of oscinine passerines with the exception of a few traits. Typical songbirds have 9–10 secondaries (including tertials), but bowerbirds have 11–14. Bowerbirds also have an enlarged lachrymal (part of the skull cranium, near the orbit) that is paralleled only in the Australian lyrebirds (Menuridae). Bowerbirds have high average survivorship, and some individuals live for 20–30 years.

Within the family, great bowerbirds (Chlamydera nuchalis) are the largest and golden bowerbirds (Prionodura newtoniana) are the smallest. Males are typically, but not always, heavier and are larger in most body measurements than females. Juveniles and immature bowerbirds are generally smaller in wing length and weight than adults. The bill is typically stout and powerful; exceptions are the fine and longer bill of regent bowerbirds (Sericulus chrysocephalus) and the falcon-like toothed mandibles of tooth-billed bowerbirds (Scenopoeetes dentirostris). Legs and feet are stout, powerful, and scutellate.

The family exhibits 50–60 different plumages. Catbirds are sexually and cryptically monochromatic, and both sexes of the polygynous tooth-billed, Vogelkop (Amblyornis inornatus), and Chlamydera bowerbirds are nearly identical. The other polygynous species are sexually dichromatic, with adult males adorned with colorful and ornate plumages and females being drab (some are barred ventrally). Juvenile and immature male plumages are similar to those of adult females. Males take five to seven years to fully acquire adult plumage.

Legs and feet are typically dark brown, olive-brown, olive, blue-gray, or black. Mouth color can be black, pale yellow, or orange-yellow depending on species. The skin of nestlings is pinkish, orange-pink, or pale flesh colored. Bill color is typically dark brown to black but can be pale or sexually dimorphic in some species. Iris color is typically pale to dark brown but is red in adult catbirds, whitish in Sericulus, and blue in Ptilonorhynchus.

Distribution

Ten species are confined to New Guinea and eight to Australia, and the two remaining species occur on both. Bowerbirds are mainly confined to the tropics and subtropics; only satin bowerbirds extend significantly into and across temperate regions. The Australian Chlamydera are mainly lowland dwelling but species in New Guinea occur up to 5,900 ft (1,800 m) altitude. Because of the vast mountain ranges, forest-dwelling New Guinea bowerbirds segregate by altitude. Only white-eared (Ailuroedus buccoides) and black-eared (A. melanotis) catbirds and great bowerbirds occupy continental islands.

Habitat

Species of Ailuroudus, Scenopoeetes, Amblyornis, and Prionodura are predominantly confined to rainforests and Archboldia to moss forests. Species of Sericulus and Ptilonorhynchus occur in rainforest but also at rainforest edges, and the latter species within adjacent wet forests and woodlands. The Chlamydera bowerbirds are adapted to more open, drier, riverine forests, forest/grassland ecotones, open woodland, savanna, and almost desert.

Behavior

The family includes species with socially monogamous and polygynous mating systems. Monogamous pairs of catbirds defend an all-purpose territory. Males do not assist with nest building, incubation, or brooding of nestlings (which they do feed). The promiscuous males of the 17 polygynous bowerbirds defend only the immediate area of their bowers. A seasonal hyperabundance of fruits permits promiscuous males to spend inordinate amounts of time at their courts, in attracting/courting females, while also permitting females to nest and provision their offspring unaided.

Uniquely within the avian world, promiscuous males clear court areas and skillfully build complex symmetrical structures of sticks, grasses, or other vegetation, and decorate them. Three types of modified courts are: cleared and leaf-decorated courts, maypole bowers, and avenue bowers. Maypoles consist of branches and/or saplings with accumulations of orchid stems or sticks and an elaborate and decorated discrete mat beneath it. Avenues consist of two parallel walls of sticks or grass stems placed vertically into a foundation that is laid on a ground court that may extend beyond one or both ends of the bower to form a platform.

Male bowerbirds decorate courts and bowers with items such as leaves, flowers, fruits, lichens, beetle wing cases, insect skeletons, tree resin, snail shells, bones, river-worn pebbles, and specific parrot tail feathers and nuptial plumes of adult males of certain birds of paradise. Charcoal, glass, and innumerable other man-made objects may also be used. Males of some species manufacture and apply paint to bowers, even holding a wad of vegetable matter in the bill tip to use as a tool to apply paint. Because of this complex behavior, bowerbirds have been associated with high intelligence and artistic abilities.

Courts and bowers are located on favored topography exhibiting one or more micro-environmental features required by males. Bower sites are occupied for decades, and adult males exhibit long-term (one or more decades) fidelity to them. Immature males spend an apprenticeship of five to six years visiting rudimentary, or practice, courts or bowers of their own construction and bowers of adult males to acquire skills for better bower building, decorating, and displaying to attract females.

Courts and bowers are critical to male reproductive success in the polygynous species. They provide a focal point to which males attract females for courting and mating. Adult males of most species average 50–70% of daylight at their bower sites. Activities at bower sites involve vocalizations (advertisement song and other calls, including mimicry), bower maintenance (building, decorating, painting), display, and chasing unwanted conspecifics away. Rival males damage each others bowers and/or steal favored decorations, in so doing improving their own chances of attracting more potential mates.

Sexual selection, through mate choice by females, is fundamentally important to the evolution of elaborate display traits (ornate plumage and/or bower complexity/decoration) of bowerbirds. In some species colorful and elaborate display plumage has been lost and replaced by, or transferred to, a bower structure and its decorations. Discerning females assess the frequency and intensity of male bower attendance, the quality and/or quantity of bowers and decorations, displays, plumage, and vocalizations before soliciting the male of their choice. It is the older males, those with greater experience, skills, and survival, that are typically selected as mates by females.

Feeding ecology and diet

While typically omnivorous, several bowerbirds are more specialized in having a predominantly fruit diet supplemented by arthropods and other animals such as worms, frogs, skinks, and birds. Flowers, leaves, sap, and few seeds may also be eaten. Unlike birds of paradise, bowerbirds do not use their feet to hold and manipulate food.

Bowerbirds do not digest seeds but act as true seed dispersal agents to the plants on which they feed. The traditional nature of bower sites suggests that a local abundance of food plants might result from the germination of seeds defecated by the birds. Catbirds store or cache fruits about their territories, and males of some polygynous species do so about their bower sites.

Reproductive biology

Courtship of monogamous catbirds is simplistic; a male chases a female through tree foliage to then hop and bounce between perches in front of her before mating. Courtship of most polygynous bowerbirds is far more complex and is typically instigated by the arrival of a female at a bower site, after which the male moves away from the visitor in a ritualized fashion and/or hides from her view while producing a subsong that includes vocal mimicry of other bird calls and environmental sounds. Male regent bowerbirds differ in initiating courtship by leading females to their bower from the forest canopy, where they had advertised their location by bright plumage rather than by calls. Courtship display typically commences on the bower court. Females signal their readiness to mate by solicitation posturing. Copulation usually takes place on the bower court, mat, or platform, or within the avenue.

The same nest location, even the specific site, is sometimes used each year by catbird pairs or by the same female of a polygynous species. Nests typically consist of a stick foundation with a nest-cup of dried leaves and twigs atop this and within which a discrete cup lining of finer material holds the clutch.

Elliptical eggs are pale and unmarked in Ailuroedus, Scenopoeetes, Amblyornis, Archboldia, and Prionodura and colored and vermiculated in Sericulus, Ptilonorhynchus, and Chlamydera. Clutch size is one to three eggs for both monogamous and polygynous bowerbirds. Eggs are laid on alternate days, with incubation usually starting with clutch completion. Renesting occurs following a nest loss, but there is no evidence of two broods being raised in a single season.

Depending on species, incubation lasts 21–27 days and the period lasts 17–30 days. Bowerbirds do not regurgitate meals to nestlings, unlike birds of paradise.

Details of nestling growth and development are known only for Ailurodus, Archboldia, and Prionodura. Nestlings of monogamous parents grow faster than those with only a female parent and also leave the nest when smaller as a proportion of adult size. Nestling bowerbirds fledge well feathered in a plumage similar to that of adult females, with some down remaining on the crown and elsewhere. After leaving the nest, bowerbird offspring depend on their parent(s) for 40–60 days or more. Proportions of successful nests, eggs, and nestlings are greater in monogamous than in polygynous species.

Nesting seasons in New Guinea are poorly known. Bowerbirds nest during the latter part of the dry season (late August through September) in Australian rainforests when temperatures, rainfall, and food resources are increasing. Egg laying peaks during October through December. Fruit and arthropod abundance reach a peak during hotter, wetter, months as females provision nestlings/fledglings (and adults begin their annual molt).

Conservation status

While several Australian species have lost parts of previously more extensive ranges to habitat destruction/degradation, none is rare or endangered as a species. A subspecies of western bowerbirds (Chlamydera guttata carteri) may be Near Threatened because of its highly restricted range. Adelbert bowerbirds (Sericulus bakeri) are listed as Vulnerable and Archbolds's bowerbird (Archboldia papuensis) are listed as Near Threatened. In addition to habitat destruction, the spread of domestic/feral cats and other exotic vertebrates through New Guinea forests may represent a threat to bowerbird populations.

Significance to humans

A few New Guineans and Australian aboriginals have long worn the crests of adult male Amblyornis and Chlamydera species respectively as personal adornment. Papuan men perceive male bowerbird activities as equivalent to their own efforts in seeking to attract and pay for a bride. Some aboriginal people respect male bowerbirds as avian custodians of ceremonies involving secret business (rites) of their own. They believed that Chlamydera species steal the bones of people for their own ceremonial purposes, and so birds and bowers are unmolested. Because birds take items from human middens as decorations they may influence the interpretation of archaeological assemblages. Of the 20 species, eight have been bred in aviaries.

60 Minute link, http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=umsobi8GR3U

Trevor Downunder , 6/10/08

[kmiller]

Trevor, those are awsome photos and great information. I hope you will continue to post as a beginner I believe I could learn alot from you as I have others. You have alot to offer to this forum. Thanks Keith

[Roman]

Trev,
You know how I feel so keep posting photos, information and anything from the hobbyists from across the pond...
Roman
_________________
"...the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do
nothing." Edmund Burke

Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
Albert Einstein

[mnord]

Trevor,
Glad to see that you didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There will always be bumps but I truly feel that this is a good informative place to be. Even though I have already viewed most of these photos privately, it is good to see them again here. With your photos of the Crimson, now Roman can really see how spectacular in color the adult birds actually are.
Thanks and keep it coming.

Monte

[Frank]

Trevor,
Wonderful pictures, feel free to keep up posting here. I'm not afraid to say that many members enjoy you, your posts and your pictures

Frank

[Terra Firma]

Thanks for the reply everyone , i can honestly say we can all benefit from peoples posts from around the globe. This male Regent Bowerbird below would often frequent my old property many years ago. The male would fly in to feed on my miniture date palms, fruit trees etc.

Regent bowerbird, {Sericulus chrysocephalus}




The Satin Bowerbirds ability to thieve from the careless

http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-5431914004071212870&hl=en

Courtship of Satin male, towards the end of the clip you will here him mimic the sounds of crimson rosellas, black cockatoos, {which sound like seagulls}, and many more. These clever birds follow closely behind the lyrebird in there art of mimicry.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2462769655630609025&vt=lf&hl=en
_________________
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http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdfg8uzF6M


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